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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: And therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between
the seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of
to-morrow, already entered upon the possession of their
inheritance. History repeats itself, but the special call of an
art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly
gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
Nothing will awaken the same response of pleasurable emotion or
conscientious endeavour. And the sailing of any vessel afloat is
an art whose fine form seems already receding from us on its way to
the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion. The taking of a modern
steamship about the world (though one would not minimize its
The Mirror of the Sea |
